Miriam Yeung plays woman caught in a troubled marriage who thinks back to a love triangle from her school days…
Director Adam Wong and producer Saville Chan, the team behind the surprise 2013 Hong Kong youth hit The Way We Dance, return with She Remembers, He Forgets, a tale of romance, relationship troubles and nostalgia. Packing real star power in the form of popular actress Miriam Yeung (Little Big Master), the film was one of two opening galas at the 2015 Hong Kong Asian Film Festival, its main selling point being a switching between past and present in an attempt to weave a complex emotional narrative.
The film kicks off with Miriam Yeung as the middle-aged Gigi, working as a travel agent and married to interior designer Shing-Wah (Jan Lam, Hello Babies). With their marriage going a rough patch and suspecting Shing-Wah of having an affair, a college reunion gets Gigi thinking back to their school days back in the 1990s when she (played then by Cecilia So) and Shing-Wah (Nick Yau) had another friend called Bok-Man (Ng Siu-Hin), a serious and intelligent type who dreamed of being a pilot. A love triangle of sorts develops between the three, with Gigi eventually ending up with Shing-Wah. Now wondering if she made the wrong decision, she starts trying to track down Bok-Man, learning more about herself and about what happened in the past in the process.
Clearly, She Remembers, He Forgets is a fairly generic film, in terms of plot at least, and the above synopsis should give a pretty good idea of where it goes with its familiar premise. Certainly, there aren’t many surprises in what amounts to a predictable series of revelations leading up to an entirely foreseeable conclusion, and this undermines Adam Wong’s attempts to wring dramatic tension from the film’s shifting relationships. While the film generally ticks all the right emotional boxes, and does manage its share of effective moments, it’s hampered by an overall lack of surprise, despite Wong’s efforts to shake things up somewhat with its jumping between adult and teenage life. The scenes in the past are arguably the film’s strongest, even if some of the segues with the present are handled better than others, and they do at least help to keep things trundling at a decent and to provide a solid structure.
A reasonable amount work, if not much innovation seems to have gone into the characters, Gigi in particular, and this gives the film a bit of a lift and makes it more engaging than it would otherwise have been. Though not really different to other protagonists in films of the type, Gigi’s development does hold the interest, her relationship troubles being at least partly her own fault, and her nostalgic exploration of the past down to a burgeoning midlife crisis as much as her marriage issues. Miriam Yeung holds the film together with a strong performance, and the young actors all impress – Jan Lam is fine, though is given markedly less to do in a rather nondescript role, Shing-Wah and his own problems never taking centre stage. The film is just about moving enough as a result, and for the most part shows a respectable restraint when it comes to cheap tugs at the heartstrings.
The film’s main charm is its Hong Kong feel and setting, something which is becoming increasingly rare in these days of the Mainland-dominated industry. Wong’s direction is accomplished, and the film looks good throughout and has a great eye for details, showing a clever use of colour and really bringing the city to life, both in the present day and the hazy, sunshine-bathed past. As with The Way We Dance Wong gives the proceedings a sense of energy and drive during the sections in the 1990s, and though this isn’t really matched by anything in the scenes in the present, it does give the film a much-needed kick.
She Remembers, He Forgets is by no means a bad one, and Adam Wong has here produced a perfectly watchable genre film that should be enjoyable for fans of the form or Miriam Yeung, or for anyone looking for something with a distinct Hong Kong flavour. Though there’s nothing the film really does wrong, it’s nevertheless let down by an overall lack of originality, either in terms of plot or character, and an inability to really pull its various elements together in the kind of fashion needed to make it truly gripping.